The cold crept in quietly overnight, crawling and creeping its way into the flowerbeds, smothering the silent screams of the huddled blooms. It left them shriveled and twisted, and lingered in the morning light to admire its work. The flower corpses remained tangled in the dirt flowerbeds for an entire day. Eventually they were unceremoniously ripped from the earth later by their caretakers and dumped into plastic buckets while the cold leered from the shadows. The flowerbeds remained bare, like freshly mounded graves, for the rest of winter. winter’s cold grip strangles the last remnants of autumn’s blooms